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Muh’ Science!

Even among those that profess a belief in limited government there is an ready willingness to join hands with the big-government progressives on the subject of science funding. I mean, any fool can see we need government to fund science – no profit-oriented business would fund basic science research if the probability of a marketable product resulting were unknown. A recent article in Scientific American (Feb 2016, pg 11) editorializes on this very viewpoint – that “without government resources, basic science will grind to a halt.” The irony within the article is that the author doesn’t realize the evidence he cites to advance his position in fact undermines, rather than bolsters, his argument. He claims private profit seeking businesses would never have an incentive to pursue such research… right after citing how such businesses used to do exactly that (AT&T Bell Labs and Xerox PARC). Gee, I wonder why they stopped? You don’t suppose it had anything to do with the ever expanding growth of government funding of basic science research? Indeed, why would any company make investments into basic science research if some other large entity (the government) is going to do it for them by publicly funding the research and freely publishing the results? The author then doubles down on the cognitive dissonance by calling those who believe that profit-driven companies will altruistically pay for basic science naïve. So people are naïve to believe that something that the author just cited as a past occurrence (privately backed basic science research) could occur in the future? Indeed, although it did snow last winter, now that it is summer I think it is naïve to believe it could ever snow again.

Truly there is no clearer case of the cart pushing the horse. The increase in public funding of basic science research was not a response to declining private funding; rather, it caused that very decline by providing an incentive for private industry to shift the risk burden onto the public.

If one is still unable to imagine a world without socialized science funding, then let’s examine history to see what the future might bring. Not only did we have the private labs of AT&T Bell Labs as well as Xerox PARC as free market models, we also had non-profit philanthropic foundations, such as the now over one-hundred year old Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Research Corporation, while philanthropic, follows a sound business model. They invest in basic scientific research at universities and when that research yields results that can be commercialized they package the technology and transfer the patents and use the profits to support future research grants.

Imagine that, a free market approach to funding basic science research that is both sustainable (success breeds more success) and does not require theft (taxation) in order to fund it. These are but a few examples of how the free market did, and can once again, provide support for basic science research and puts the lie to the assertion of the state-worshipers that such things are impossible without government support.